Remote Connectivity Analyzer Version History

Known Issues

A couple of the tests allow you to "Ignore trusts for SSL". Checking this option
only tells the tool to not fail if the certificate you are using is not in the list
of Trusted Root Certificates... for example if you were using a certificate from
your own Windows CA. This option does not allow the test to be completed over a
non-SSL connection. That is, if you do not have a certificate and want to test whether
Exchange ActiveSync works over port 80 - this tool cannot perform this validation.
We will not be able to add this feature in the future. Note: Due to limitations
in the RPC API, we are currently unable to ignore the trust requirement for SSL
for the RPC over HTTP / Outlook Anywhere tests. We are looking into alternatives
for future releases.

Copy to clipboard doesn't work in Firefox by default (you have to enable it.)

While performing tests, the stage of testing will no longer update while the
test is being performed. Your full test results will be available once the test is complete.

Version 1.5 (August 2012)

Improved the CAPTCHA experience when pressing enter after entering the challenge.

Autodiscover tests now treat an HTTP 401 as a fatal error and stop further processing.

Version 1.4 (May 2012)

We are using a new CAPTCHA service provided by an internal team.

The challenge is NOT case sensitive, so it doesn't matter if you type upper or lower case letters. We also note this on the web page.

The CAPTCHA challenges will not include hard to distinguish letters/numbers. For example 2 and Z or O and 0.

If you get the challenge wrong, the password entries will not be removed.

Once you enter a correct response to the challenge, you will be verified for a set amount of time. This means you will not see additional CAPTCHA challenges until the timeout period expires.

The main wizard now resizes automatically to make better use of higher screen resolutions when displaying test results.

The inbound SMTP test now inserts the IP address of the user performing the test into the test email message. The IP is also inserted into an SMTP Header (X-Originating-IP).

Fixed an issue in the Sender-ID test where certain DNS responses while evaluating the "exists" mechanism were incorrectly being treated as a TempError

The outbound SMTP Sender-ID tests now conform to the RFC specified limit of ten DNS-based mechanisms that can be used during the evaluation of the SPF record.

Fixed an issue where host names with all numbers in the top-level domain were not considered valid input

Fixed user interface issues that can cause the "helper bubble" to stick around when navigating in the wizard

Added a note to the EWS service account access test indicating that the mailbox must be empty

Changed the Windows Mobile Certificate test to warn instead of fail when certificates aren't trusted by Windows Mobile since many other devices also use ActiveSync and may trust the certificate

Changed the Outlook Anywhere mutual authentication test to report a warning instead of an error when the mutual authentication
(msstd: string) only matches a Subject Alternative Name on the certificate. Windows Vista SP1 and later can handle this configuration.

The Outlook Anywhere Proxy Ping and HTTP Authentication Method Tests now use the full query string; this is necessary to support certain UAG configurations.

Added additional error mappings for known issues

Version 1.3 (June 2011)

Microsoft Exchange Remote Connectivity analyzer is now the Microsoft Remote
Connectivity Analyzer. The future direction for this tool is to
incorporate more products as we have done with Office 365. Thus dropping
"Exchange" from the name made sense. There are still lots of strings where
you'll see ExRCA or Exchange; we're cleaning these up in a future release.

Tabbed user-interface to support multiple products and Office 365.

Office 365 Single sign-on validation. This test allows you to validate
identity federated scenarios with Office 365. Specifically, this new test
targets the "Basic Authentication" federated scenario where a client sends
credentials to Office 365 which in turn validates them against the on-premises
ADFS server.

Fixed an issue where ExRCA wouldn't validate certain top-level domains such as
.travel and .museum.

Added code so if the Enter key is pressed in the wizard, the default action is
"next" instead of "previous". Previously, this didn't work for browsers other
than IE.

Better cross-browser support, fully supporting IE8-IE9 standards mode as well as
other major browsers.

Version 1.2 (Oct 2010)

Localized the strings in ExRCA so that the user interface can be presented in the
language of the user's browser. To enable this feature, use the
browser's Language Preference settings to set your language order preference.
Currently, the following languages are supported:

Chinese (Traditional)

Chinese (Simplified)

English

French

German

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Portuguese

Russian

Spanish

Fixed issues in the Autodiscover test where an invalid XML response was received
even though the POST request was answered with an HTTP 200. (This is the bottom
known issue from v1.1 below)

Fixed certification matching issues that were causing certificate chains from
some authorities to be considered invalid even though they were truly valid and
trusted.

Fixed an issue where certain Autodiscover and AirSync error responses were not
being parsed correctly.

Fixed a few unhandled exceptions in the outbound SMTP test.

Version 1.1 (May 2010)

Session timeout page properly clears the session when using browsers other than
Internet Explorer.

Each protocol now uses a proper HTTP verb when performing the HTTP
Authentication methods test. For instance, this means that the Outlook
Anywhere test now sends an RPC_IN_DATA request instead of a GET. This previously caused
requests to fail through some reverse proxies and firewalls which limited the
HTTP verbs that could be used to an expected subset.

Each HTTP request now includes an appropriate User-Agent header with the
request.

ExRCA will now detect if you have "Accept Client Certificate" or "Require Client
Certificates" enabled in IIS when it is inappropriate.

The URL Validator now allows domain names that start with numbers.

A help icon has been added to the top right of the page that links to the
TechNet documentation for ExRCA.

Fixed a known issue where ExRCA would report an error and terminate the test
execution when no authentication methods were selected in IIS.

Fixed an issue in the EWS Synchronization tests where all events are not
returned on the first call to GetEvents.

Version 1.0 (October 2009)

Updated interface for a more pleasing experience

We heard lots of feedback that the old CAPTCHA (the hard to read words that make
you prove you are human) implementation was very difficult to read, especially for
people who are color-blind. We implemented the Windows Live version of CAPTCHA which
should make this easier.

We added two more tests to the tool

Exchange Web Services - This allows you to perform connectivity testing for Exchange
Web Services client such as Entourage. Developers can also use the Service
Account Verification test to ensure things are configured and working properly for
access with an alternate account or ExchangeImpersonation.

Added a link in the footer to the Remote Connectivity Analyzer TechNet forum

Modified the input pages for Outlook Anywhere and ActiveSync to allow you to chose
Autodiscover or manually specified server settings in one place instead of having
to run two different tests.

Added a password confirmation text box to ensure the proper password was entered
before running a test. This will reduce the number of tests that fail simply due
to a typo in the password.

Version 0.6.1 (June 2009)

Fixed issues where the SSL Certificate Trust logic was failing with "PartialChain".
On Windows-based tests, we now warn instead of fail if we are unable to build the
chain without the Crypto API's "Root Certificate Update" functionality.

Version 0.6 (May 2009)

Added version information to the footer and a change log history so you can read
what's new!

Added some graphics and separated out the tests for better usability. Hope
you like it.

Added the ability to "Warn" in certain scenarios. Previously, we
only Succeeded or Failed. Currently, the warnings are within the details of the
tests and are not summarized in the overall results. We plan on adding the ability
to indicate warnings in the summary in a future release.

Added Warning scenario where the authentication method on the Microsoft-Server-Activesync
vdir was set to "Windows Integrated" (Since WM6+ phones work in this configuration
but many other devices don't). Instead of failing the test, we will succeed
and the individual test within the details will indicate a warning.

The throttling error message should be clearer. That's right, we only
allow a single test per domain to be completed every 30 seconds.

Now consistent with the Outlook behavior to not use RPC mutual authentication when
the Autodiscover service returns the word "none" for the CertPrincipalName.

Added additional detail in the SSL Certificate Validation and show each test for
validity (name, trust, and date).

Added logic to the ActiveSync SSL Certificate Test to which versions of Windows
Mobile will trust the certificate issued.

Added logic to the ActiveSync SSL Certificate Test to look for missing certificates
in the chain sent down by the server like
SSLChainSaver.

Added additional details to the SMTP Test when an SMTP Error code is returned by
the remote server. Now you can see the SMTP status code in every case.

Modified the SMTP Test Message to include additional text. Hopefully this
will reduce the likelihood of the test message being classified as spam.